Mathew 22 37-40 and Mathew 28 18-20
Why Do We Have Church?
I. Introduction
A. Attention Graber
1. When I was in 7th grade we had to do what I thought was the most ridiculous project in I had ever done
2. We had to put together a leaf notebook explain the different kinds of leaves from different trees and we had to put them in different classifications
3. This seemed to me to be busy work. I hate busy work. I want to know why I am doing something
4. I want to know the purpose behind what I am doing.
5. So I asked my Teacher flat out “What is the purpose of this”
6. He seemed quite disturbed that I would ask a question like that, his only answer was when your on a date with a girl you can sound smart and tell her what type of tree it is.
7. That was not good enough for me
B. Problems
1. I think we often have the same reaction to Church; we have a hard time understanding why we have church.
2. And because of that hard time we often loose interest
3. But why do we have church?
4. What is the purpose of the Church?
C. To find the purpose of the Church we need to ask ourselves four questions
1. Why Does the Church Exist?
2. What we are to be as a Church?
3. What are we to do as a Church?
4. How are We to do it?
D. These are very difficult question to answer
E. There are a lot scripture that have to do with the Church, a real quick study I did found there to be 43 different scriptures passages dealing with the Church.
F. So how can we understand what the purpose of the church is with that many different passages, we like thing that are easy to understand
G. Our Risen Savior, Jesus, did something real easy for us
H. He took explained the purpose of the Church in 2 Scripture Passages that we know well
1. The first one in the Great Commandment (Notice I did not say the 10 commandments) found in Mathew 22:37-40
2. The Great Commission Found in Mathew 28:18-20
I. From these two classic passages we find the five purpose of the Church
I. Purpose #1: Worship
A. Explanation
1. The first phrase in the Great Commandment is “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart”
2. How do we do that?
3. In what ways can we Love the Lord with all our Heart?
4. We have a word we like to use for this. Worship
5. I have played around trying to think of another word to use, but Worship is the only one that fits
6. Worship is simply our expression of Love for God
7. It is the way we communicate to God how much we love Him.
8. We as humans have a tendency to make things harder then they are
9. Worship is purely an expression of our love to God
10. When we add on to that definition when end up running into trouble
B. Explanation
1. What does this mean for our Church
2. We should not be worshiping out of duty
3. We worship out of love
4. We worship because we are expressing our love to God
C. Illustration
1. How do you show your spouse you love her? Gary Smalley wrote a great book called the Five Love languages. By the way you can order it from the Lighthouse. In this book he suggest that everyone people have a different way they like to receive love and show love.
2. Worship should never be confined to Sunday Morning when we are together singing.
3. Worship can be done by our selves or with a group of 100,000 people
4. Worship is more then just a song.
5. Most of us do not use the same way to express our love to our spouses we try different things
6. The same should be true with worship
7. Next week we are going to dive heavily into this subject of worship.
II. Purpose #2: Connect
A. Explanation
1. Read 28:19
2. Notice the word baptizing
3. Immediately you are thinking dunking is a purpose of the Church
4. Well sort of, we are suppose to baptize people
5. But why do we baptize people, to ask our favorite question, what is the purpose of Baptism?
6. We get baptize to be identified as a believer of Christ
7. Being identified as a believer of Christ automatically identifies you with the collective body of Christ
8. Baptism is not only a symbol of salvation, it is a symbol of connecting with other believers
9. That connecting of believers is not only nice, it is required
10. We as Christians are not only called to believe, we are called to belong
B. Application
1. What does that mean for our Church?
2. We are never meant to be lone ranger Christians
3. A lone ranger Christian will not be able to survive without support
4. As a Church we need to constantly be supporting each other
5. Lending a ear, shoulder, be a cheer leaders
6. We need to make sure we Connect with other believers
7. Connecting is more then just a pot-luck supper
8. Connecting is being involved in each other lives
C. Illustration
1. When Incubators were first used there was a much higher death rate then there is today. Granted we have improved technology and cure many more dieses then we could. But the greatest decrease of deaths happened from a simple invention. They put gloves in the plastic bubble so you could touch the baby.
2. Scientist have sighted that the touch produces Endorphins and Endorphins help the baby to get healthy.
3. In our Christian walk we need endorphins, we need to be connect with one another, otherwise our survival rate greatly decreases
III. Purpose #3: Grow
A. Explanation
1. Read 28:20
2. And Teach them to obey
3. Read Eph 4:12b-13
4. That might sound confusing but it shouldn’t be
5. It means we are to educate fellow believers
6. We are to teach people to become more like Christ
7. To help each understand who God is
8. This is not a process that ever has an ending
9. We are to be continually educating fellow Believers
10. That is why Growing is a purpose of the Church.
B. Application
1. What does that mean for our Church?
2. We need to make sure that we have opportunities for growth
3. WE need to make sure that we are feeding Christians
4. We need to make sure that there is growth happening
C. Illustration
1. Think about the cycle of a tree. It begins as a little tiny sapling growing out of the ground, then it grows into a little tree, continues to grow, becoming thinker and more ground, and grows and grows and grows. Now what happens when it stops growing
2. IT DIES!
3. We are not any different
4. If we stop growing spiritually, we will die
5. Therefore as a church we must always be thinking of way to help growth
6. How to effectively do what the Scripture says “Teach Everything that Christ has commanded”
IV. Purpose #4: Serve
A. Explanation
1. Read Mathew 22:39
2. Love your neighbor as yourself
3. The Golden rule
4. Treat each other as you would like to be treated
5. When we start thinking how we would like to be treated it changes us.
6. If we were without food, we would want someone to give us food
7. If could not cut our grass, we would want someone to cut our grass
8. Jesus you remember had a great multitude gathered one day and was teaching them, well after He got done teaching them, He realized they were hungry
9. So He fed them
10. He did not say have a good day, he fed them
B. Application
1. So what does it mean for our church?
2. It means we need to be involved in service
3. We need to be serving others
4. Many feel it is the job of the Church minister to the spiritual needs of the congregation
5. Partly true, however we are also to minister to the emotional, relational, and physical needs of the community
6. Our job as a Church is to make sure we are meeting the needs
7. When we have someone come to us in need, we need to help him
8. The problem occurs when we get an ego and stop remembering what Scripture says, love your neighbor as yourself
9. How would you like you ask someone for help with food, and they said, to quote James 2:16, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,"
10. That is our job, not a good thing to do, a required task
11. A purpose of the Church
V. Purpose #5: Reach
A. Explanation
1. Read 28:19
2. Therefore, Go and make disciples
3. A disciple can be defined as a follower of Christ
4. So when the Bible tells us to go and make disciples how do we do that?
5. We reach people with the Good news
6. The good news that The Savior of the world came to Earth died on the Cross to Save us from our sins
7. Our job is to communicate that
8. Our job is to reach people who do no know the Good News
9. It is everybody responsibility to do this
10. This is not a task reserved for just a few selected chosen ones
B. Application
1. What does this mean for our Church?
2. This means that reaching people for Christ is not a option
3. It is not a suggestion
4. It is a commandment
5. In fact you will notice in every Gospel (Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John) that is mentions reaching people
C. Illustration
1. Imagine if you just found the cure for cancer. You would be ecstatic! You would be jumping up and down. You would realize that because you know the cure you could possibly save million of lives
2. What would you do with that news? I’ll tell you what you would do. You would tell everyone!
3. That is something you would share with everyone you meet
4. You have been Given the Gospel of Eternal life to share,
5. That is the greatest news of all
6. This is more then our responsibility, it is our great privilege
7. We need to be reaching people with the good news
Conclusion
A. Over the next 5 weeks we will be looking at these five purposes in much greater detail
B. We will begin to see areas we do well and areas we might need to think of different ideas to accomplish the purpose
C. Understand I am not trying to introduce any new programs, committees, organizations ect
D. What we are doing is to borrow a computer term talking about the operating systems
E. Programs are used to accomplish a purpose, they change get upgraded make revisions ect.
F. But still try and accomplish the same task
G. Let me give you an example
a. When I first started using the computer to write papers I used Bank Street Writer, I then switch to Word Perfect (and my upgrades there) and now I am using Microsoft Word. They all did the same thing, they all were word processing programs
H. Understand we are not talking about the different programs of the church
I. WE are talking about what we are suppose to be doing, the purpose
J. Everything that we do in Church should full fill at least one of these purposes. If it doesn’t why do we do it?
K. As we study these purpose in details in your mind start asking yourself what we are doing to fulfill these purposes and how could we do it better.
L. Are we doing something that does not full fill a purpose
M. And finally is there a purpose we are not fulfilling?
N. Pray
